Shocked by this new technique that Tanshu had displayed Misu clenched his blade harder. He never was too fond of this youngster, he always thought that everyone was too soft on this kid who spent almost half his life as a criminal. He couldn't stand his stupid act of a tortured soul. Still, he had to hand it to the fool that he was skilled, had Misu not had his Vapor mode at his disposal the Red Dog would have required some additional planning to take out. Misu wouldn't have felt nearly as brave just jumping into the fight with him, he would've asked someone to assist him or that the Mizukage spared him some secret weapon in Kirigakure's disposal. The country spent the better part of its history plotting destruction of Konoha, surely they must have had something to take this cocky idiot down.
"Calm down, this changes nothing – it must be just a combination transformation of some sort, there is absolutely no way that he can sense the secret of my Vapor mode. He may be faster, stronger or whatever but it doesn't matter if he can't get his hands on me…" the Sannin kept calming his racing heart down. The world as he saw it – enveloped in war, a cruel vortex of flames and death, the state that keeps the skill of every ninja sharp, makes them grow and evolve constantly or get swiped aside by the twister of history was at the palm of his hand. No man-dog creature could stop that.
Tanshu's hand reached to the side and grabbed a handle of a staircase, the Sage Mode user gripped the handle tighter and it melted where his grip was situated leaving a spiky iron bar in the man's hand. The flow of chakra from the body of Tanshu was so immense that when it touched any other substance it rubbed against it so hard that it heated it up. It may have taken the Red Dog the better part of the day to charge up this technique for use but it seemed to be quite the ace in his sleeve. Misu leaped forward winding his sword backwards and then thrusting its point at the Sage. "Vapor Style: Vapor Dragon Jutsu!" Misu roared out as a powerful gust of wind forced the wild and constant flow of water vapor from his body accumulate into a giant shape of the gapping jaws of a gigantic dragon. Tanshu's arms lifted up and got placed into a handseal.
"Sage Art: Cerberus Howl!" the man growled out sending a powerful heating shockwave at the concentration of the vapor dragon tearing it to bits and proceeding to incinerate and utterly disintegrate the man in the center of the cloud using the technique. Sage chakra completely dominated any other kind of chakra, Vapor Dragon Jutsu was supposed to be the perfect clashing technique – stand still and absorb any answers that the opponent throws and then lash out violently devouring the target in a wild rush of vapor that simultaneously and wildly changed its temperature and density constantly. It was a living hell for those that got hit by it, still it was absolutely no match for the Sage chakra of Tanshu.
"You fool!" Misu's voice yelled laughing maniacally from the shooting cloud of vapor as his fist appeared out of nowhere aimed right at Tanshu's face. The Sage just leaned his head to the side effortlessly avoiding the blow as if he was expecting it, no, as if he knew where it was coming from perfectly. Tanshu's fist tore through the Vapor clone and disintegrated Misu's shape once again. The flaring eyes turned and stared at a random point in the cloud of vapor that constantly grew, no, the point was anything but random – the eyes were staring right into the eyes of the real Misu.
"NO! Impossible! How could he know!? Tanshu isn't a sensor nor does he possess Byakugan or a similar technique!" Misu thought to himself as he quickly leaped to the side to relocate. His feet moved quietly but swiftly, the Sannin couldn't believe that Tanshu saw through it all. How could he have known that the Vapor mode was a simple use of Vapor clones combined with the Substitution Jutsu, using the constant upkeep of the Vapor mist that helped him confuse his enemies and conceal the trickery. Obviously someone who could track chakra would see right through it but… Tanshu wasn't supposed to be able to do that!
Sage Tanshu appeared right in front of where Misu was headed – his speed was incredible, incomparable not only to that of a normal ninja but even to his own. Even Tanshu's own league was completely outclassed by this display. The dog-man figure just growled angrily.
"Sage Art Taijutsu: Dog Bullet" he chanted out as his wild barrage of punches bombarded Misu's body tearing through it like hot steel cutting through butter, still, instead of blood and guts only more vapor shot out from the Sannin's body. Tanshu's eyes took only mere moments to track the real Misu again.
"This was the last clone, you've got no one to substitute with anymore, run, make more clones, embarrass yourself more." Tanshu almost barked out as the wild transformation that the technique brought caused his voice to be a combination of both man and a beast. Misu shouted out angrily into the air lunging at Tanshu and drawing his sword, Tanshu leaped forward slashing with his bar of iron that he held in his hand, a deafening clang echoed as Misu's sword cut right through the iron bar but met Tanshu's wild heated up hand that caught the blade right up to his chest.
"You can't melt my blade, no matter how much you focus your chakra, it's chakra conductive you fool!" Misu grunted. Tanshu smiled. "I wonder about that…" as the flow of Sage chakra from his hand intensified a bright flash covered the top floor of the temple, swallowing both men in it.
"This is stupid. I don't need summons!" a much younger Tanshu yelled out after Hanasaku showed him the forest where the ninja hounds resided in. After the young woman helped him in the Tower of Bones and they all kicked God-Eyes' ass he had great respect for her and her level of strength but still he felt like she underestimated him all the time. He had to listen to her, he had to do everything she did and train with her like her apprentice, those were the conditions upon which Howoku and he agreed to. Tanshu trained with Hanasaku and in return he will climb through the ranks accordingly to his level of promise and strength that he showed.
Hanasaku pounded Tanshu into the ground, as violent as that looked she held back the greater part of her wild strength. "Yes you do! You can't just dismiss an entire field of expertise just because you're good at another. If you had the ability to summon back when you fought God-Eyes the first time you may have beaten him. Ninja dogs can be used for displacing your opponent, damaging them, they're also loyal companions and friends." Tanshu pulled his head out of the dirt and locked his hands around his chest while pouting and looking away. He had nothing against training with Hanasaku but having to train with and acquire trust of someone else was stupid, especially if this someone was someone of no use to him. Why would he kneel for an animal that was weaker to him?
"Alpha-san!" Hanasaku kneeled on her right knee and placed her palm on her right shoulder, bowing her head. She then angrily dragged the young companion of her down with her as well. The giant dog growled and upon being given a signal Hanasaku stood up.
"This young man wants to train with you guys and acquire your trust, he's a great pain in the butt but I hope that having in mind that he is my friend you will find it in you to forgive his great stupidity." the gigantic white shepherd, covered with black stripes in some areas of his body lowered its head to the level of the little man and sniffed him.
"Fine" Tanshu murmured under his nose, "This big guy looks like I could maybe use him to dispatch of any underlings of my enemies… I guess I'll let you be my comrade." The boy angrily spoke, the in front of him barked angrily sending a powerful shockwave that pushed the youth back several dozens of meters making him clench and cover his head to stay on his feet. Hanasaku sighed, she gently touched the forehead of the colossal dog and let his silver colored glowing chakra flow through her until her body went through a transformation, the woman changed right in front of the eyes of the young man. Her body then flashed in an instant implanting her elbow into his belly. Tanshu fell unconscious in a single hit.
When the young man woke up it was a late evening, Hanasaku was right by his side, the woman noticed him waking up almost immediately. She sighed and leaned up to him checking his body for any greater injuries. "What was that, back then?" Tanshu asked. Hanasaku smiled.
"Ninja dogs are a very special sort of species of ninja animals. They take great amount of loyalty and respect towards a ninja to become partners, it took me almost ten years to gain enough mutual respect for them to even let me sign their contract and let me use them in battle. However that is great because in this world there is a technique that requires a summon and a ninja to be in perfect harmony – Sage Mode. Usually one acquires summons easily and then after gaining several members of their species completely forgets about it, focuses on other skills. Very few have ever achieved this jutsu, no one had ever mastered it. The thing is that once dogs finally trust and respect you – you're incredibly close to that bond being strong enough to learn this technique. Ninja hounds are the best species to train this technique with as you will learn it the most easily with them. I'll leave you here and come back once in a while to oversee your progress, your training will move on once you
learn this technique or if I'll see there's no hope for you to learn it."
Hanasaku stood up and moved towards the door silently, she barely even looked back at the boy. Tanshu clenched his fists together and yelled out angrily, his bandaged head that he hurt when he fell after passing out started pulsing with pain almost instantly. "That power you had, it was amazing! I'll bend my knee as many times as I need, I'll eat shit if I have to but I'll learn this technique! I need it! I need it to protect my Katei!" Hanasaku turned her head back at him, just half of her face was seen in the moonlight as she showed him a thumb up and disappeared into the night. Tanshu got up and started moving towards the light in the distance, where bunch of ninja dogs were playing cards by the fire. They carried their cards in their teeth and just flipped them face down, pushing them around using their paws.
"Hey look, it's the human. Sorry, we ate everything, Alpha-san eats like a beast, we eat what's left. You eat what's left after us."
"Hey… You got thumbs, can you maybe hold our cards and play them as we tell you? Tell you what, you play my cards and scratch my back and I'll let you play with me in the morning." A tiny dog mumbled out in a drunk tone, accelerating the flow of his words and slowing it down to a crawl at random intervals.
"Yeah, I can do that." Tanshu sat down and took the wet and covered in slobber cards from the dog's teeth, then picked some up from the ground and showed them to him, letting the dog pick the cards to be played. The game went on great, soon every dog playing wanted Tanshu's help and started offering him things for the use of his thumbs to play card games. Still, Tanshu remembered what Hanasaku had told him – dogs were a species that valued loyalty and respect so he never switched his "card master", he let the tiny dog use him every time.
"You're alright, Tanshu. Tell ya what, I'll arrange it with Alpha-san that you get to sign the contract with us, I'll lend you my fangs just like you lend me your thumbs every evening. Name's Poochy by the way."
Several years later a much older Tanshu stood by a pack of crimson dogs, all of whom he had trained with, respect and loyalty of whom he had earned over the years by hunting with them like an animal. Using his own punches and kicks and teeth to take down the prey to honor their ways. It was a real bummer that Alpha, the leader of the Ninja hounds had sworn loyalty to Hanasaku, had it not been so he may have even snagged the big guy's services at some point as the two often sparred just for fun and over the several years have learned to respect one another a great deal. Hanasaku came every three months to observe his progress, by the time she came the first time he already had the contract signed and several dogs he had befriended and able to summon in a fight. Now she was standing proudly and observing his final steps towards becoming a true Sage.
"So did you get that, Tanshu-san? That's how it's done, each species on Earth has a different kind of chakra and when they mix it up it usually ain't too good, you need great mastery over your own body and your own chakra control to pull it off. You let your summon concentrate all of their chakra, build up insane amounts of it and transfer it to you, then you adapt it and match your own chakra up to it, you don't let it take over yours nor do you let yours take it over – you create a unique mixture of the two that is neither human nor animal. That is how a Sage is born – it's the ultimate combination of trust and respect between the summoned and the summoner."
Tanshu slapped his hands together and started building his chakra up, the four dogs around him also started howling as their chakra flows intensified and they started glow blood red from the immense chakra that they emanated from their bodies. The strands of chakra from Tanshu touched up with the chakras of the summoned dogs and as each dog collapsed they transferred great amounts of their chakra to Tanshu. The young man's chakra changed colors a couple of times, the crimson chakra that the dogs sent over mixing with the brownish color of his own to create the vibrant orange glow. A wild burst of flames emanated through the grasslands setting the patches of grass on fire, in the center of the mad burst of chakra stood Tanshu – now a combination of a dog and a man.
Hanasaku slapped her face with her palm. "What's wrong?" Tanshu growled out, "I feel amazing, with this technique I feel like I could beat anyone alive!" Hanasaku shrugged and crossed her arms around her chest.
"You're just as bad as I am at this. Normally the true Sage Mode shows no physical signs of transformation except the vibrant changes in chakra color and the blazing chakra nature colored eyes with the weird pupils. In your case you've failed to properly balance out the chakra, you've made it more dog than man and so you've went through a physical transformation. That is what Alpha-san called "the Imperfect Sage Mode" when he saw me doing it."
Tanshu sighed, he leaped around a couple of times and threw a couple of lightning fast punches. "Alright, so how does it work? What are the drawbacks and how do I make it end?" he asked.
Hanasaku chuckled, "In theory you could just rebuild your chakra by expelling all the traces of the Sage chakra you've formed, however I've never successfully done it. The technique ends when you use out all of the Sage chakra you've made using the transformation." In a wild blaze of orange flames the technique ended and Tanshu returned to normal. "Usually the first time your Sage chakra is impure and sloppily made, also you make very small quantities of it so it ends fast. The quality of the chakra and the amount you can generate will improve with each transformation."
Tanshu stretched out, he looked really pleased with this amazing new technique but it appeared like Hanasaku had not finished talking yet. "Before you go out there you have to know something. Because we are able of only achieving Imperfect Sage Mode it'll take great amounts of time to achieve the amount of Sage chakra needed to transform. Look at it like this, let's say you need a glass of concentrated orange juice to make you strong, thing is that you can't make concentrated orange juice and you can only make about 20-30%, which means you'll need four or five glasses of it, identically you'll need four or five times more time to reach the amount you need to use the Sage Mode, also you'll use up that many times more of it when using Sage techniques. At least that's how Howoku explained it to me after seeing it… The good part of it is that your physical attributes, depending on the species of the summon that grants you their chakra, will be enhanced beyond belief, you'll be able to sense all non-Sage chakra around you as long as you're transformed and you will also be able to put the Sage chakra into your ordinary jutsu to make unique Sage Style techniques, since the Sage chakra is so special they ignore any chakra nature comparisons and they beat any other chakra nature."
"I may have trained with you for too long as I care little for your explanations and just want to use it soon!" Tanshu laughed out, Hanasaku shook her head, "Don't rely on it too much, if your mixture of summon chakra and your own chakra is not pitch perfect, even for your Imperfect version, you can become the animal you're trying to sync with. That happened to me once, it takes a ritual of the contract species to reverse and it's not guaranteed to work, if you mess it up you may stay as a dog for the rest of your life." Tanshu scratched his head, he just realized he spent several years of his life perfecting a technique like this, a technique he could only use at a wildly imperfect version and could only use in a pinch. Still, the rush of feeling in complete sync with the Ninja Dogs was incredible. The amount at which it increased his strength and his speed was beyond astonishing.
"You said that each species have their own unique Sage Mode, what does that mean?" Tanshu asked as the thought just popped into his head. Hanasaku went through some handseals and summoned a dog and asked him to start channeling chakra. She gently tapped the head of her partner and then looked Tanshu in the eyes and nodded. "Yes, that is true, while each Sage Mode enhances one's physical abilities it does so to a certain extent. For example the speed of a Ninja Turtle Sage Mode user might even be less than that of the user before they went through the transformation, on the other hand their physical endurance would be incredibly high. As far as Dog Sage Mode is concerned, you get a vast increase in speed and a slight increase in physical strength, it isn't too much but you also get another ability, just like a dog can bite…" finally Hanasaku's partner finished channeling its chakra and in a flash of white flames the woman transformed as well, looking more like a dog on two feet than a woman.
Hanasaku leaned her arm back and then thrusted it to the earth opening up a fissure that quickly split the field in two, she Sannin then raised her hand and showed her palm to Tanshu. There was some sort of wild flow of chakra from her palm and her fingers that all came together, almost like… Jaws of a dog. "That's right, you can destroy things with your grip like a dog can tear them to shreds with its bite. While Dog Sage has only slight increase in physical strength, its grip strength is boosted to ridiculous extent, you can press things so hard that their particles get rubbed so hard that they melt. You can tear even ground itself to shreds with it.
As powerful as the transformation was Tanshu could still see its downsides, he needed to use as much of his own chakra as possible for the transformation to be easier. Which meant that once the Sage Mode ended he was left tired and completely beaten, able to only use his own natural physical strength. It was a last resort technique, plus his partners probably didn't like being used as chakra channelers, that would've also hurt their mutual trust and respect which meant that if he used them as tools to acquire Sage Mode it could've been locked down from him as his trust would've soon become not nearly as strong as it once was, as it was needed to sync up with his partners perfectly…
"I know your secret, Misu. Just try and kill me like you killed Vashia… Just TRY IT!" Tanshu roared out loud into the air sending powerful heated shockwaves as his Sage chakra flowed freely from his body, his enraged state no longer controlled the flow of chakra which meant he lost more and more Sage chakra with each second, it didn't matter, Tanshu didn't need that much time to end the killer of the woman he wanted to get to know.
P.S. I know that my version of Sage Mode differs from the original one but it was an intentional change. I just liked this idea better so I decided to change it up a bit. Sorry if you were a fan of the original "nature chakra" thing :)
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